The inventive concepts disclosed herein relate to display systems. More particularly, the inventive concepts disclosed herein relate to multicolor illumination systems for projection systems.
Typical multicolor illumination systems require separate optical channels for each color (e.g., three separate optical channels are required for a three-color illumination system). In some projection systems, multiple small input displays are projected as a single larger display image. Some multicolor illumination systems have only a single display source that is illuminated by different colors using a color wheel, LED pulses, or lasers, which sequentially illuminate the display with different colors. In such configurations, the image to be projected is divided into three (or more/less) images of different component colors, and then each image is projected for one-third of a frame so that each of the component colors combine to form a complete image over the course of one frame. However, projecting each color separately reduces the maximum brightness of the display by a factor of the number of separate colors projected.
What is needed are systems and methods for projecting a multicolored image with an illumination source that can simultaneously project multiple colors.